Valley Girl (1983)

OK I promised I would follow up the movie a day summer project with a theme that you folks voted for. Despite the fact that it is October, the month of of Halloween, you choose teen comedies of the 80's rather than Horror films. I think we can thank Allyson for pursuing this so relentlessly. I hope you all will enjoy these comments on the teen films. I was in my twenties and married when all these movies came out, so my perspective was always a little different. I am a big sentimentalist, I cry at commercials sometimes, so it is easy for me to get sucked up into a romantic comedy with some John Hughes drama layered on top. I am a lot busier than I thought I would be, so I don't have as much time to write as I was hoping for, but I will try to get in an entry a week and if I can I'll add some extras.

We are going to start with one of my wife's three favorite films. I know we saw Valley Girl in movie theaters a half dozen times at least. In fact, we went to a double feature of Valley Girl and a Cheech and Chong movie (Still Smokin or Nice Dreams), and the stoner flick was so bad, we stayed and watched Valley Girl again to get the bad taste out of our mouth. Valley Girl is just plain sweet. There is a tenderness to the relationship between the two leads that sucks you in if you have a romantic bone in your body. This was Nicholas Cage's first starring role and he hit it out of the park. He showed in this movie that he was an actor to watch, even if at times he was watchable simply because he was being himself. Here he is a real character and as an actor he makes us believe he is in love and suffering from the pain of uncertainty in his relationship. He is very funny in the section where he begins courting Julie and his casual charm in the Health Food store her father and mother run is really endearing. He has that shy smile and aw shucks manner that should make any girl think he was worth checking out.

Julie is played by Deborah Foreman, an actress that only make a couple of other films that I ever heard of. I can see immediately why she was so right in this role and may not have been right for other parts. She is cute pretty, with delicate features that look as if they will harden as she grows older. For a sixteen year old she was a perfect teen dream. I liked the relationship she had with her parents in the movie. She mostly disregards her friends, and with good reason, they are mostly shallow and don't see the things in Randy that she sees. The whole opening scene with the girls at the mall was the catalyst for the movie. The song "Valley Girl" was created by Frank Zappa after listening in on his daughters phone conversations with her friends. He was fascinated with the slang they spoke and the cadence in their delivery. The movie came out a couple of years later, it had no official connection to the song and it does not appear in the movie, but it it clear that the girls in the movie are based on the sort of girl lifestyle that Zappa had lampooned with his work.

If you listen to the dialogue in the movie, you will hear many of the lines from the song being spoken in the mall scene and when the girls are together. As much as the Zappa song was an inspiration for the movie, the real basis of the film is Romeo and Juliet. This is a story of crossed lovers that pursue their passion despite the opposing forces of their families. Not their actual families but the cliques they have cast their lots with. Julie is a preppy type from the valley who's life revolves around shopping and her friends. Randy is the brooding outcast that lives a decadent Hollywood lifestyle filled with clubs and music that Julie and her friends would think is too loud. Her friends disapprove of her relationship with Randy not because he is wrong for Julie, but because he is wrong for the in-group that they are part of. He threatens their connection to her, which threatens their vision of themselves. The connection to Shakespeare's star crossed lovers is highlighted by a brief shot of them kissing under a movie marquee that features the film title playing in the theater.

The supporting characters add a lot of humor to the movie. Michael Bowen plays the boyfriend that Julie dumps right before she meets Randy. He is "the most bitchin dude in the Valley", "What other dude can touch me?". He is a stereotypical preppy smug Don Juan of the high school scene. We know he is a bad guy by the way he uses other girls to try to manipulate Julie and to boost his own ego. Beth, is the step mother of one of Julie's friends and she has a Mrs. Robinson vibe going with one of the guys that her step daughter is into. Every time we see the movie and hear the song "Monster of Love", we crack up. That story line has nearly nothing to do with the main plot, but it sets up some fun scenes and there is a pretty good payoff with it at the end. Finally, Fred is Randy's best friend, he is part of that Hollywood outsider scene, but he is also a big goober who is more awkward and confident than a puppy. He throws himself into situations that are way over his head and can't admit that he is basically clueless. I have seen the actor that played Fred in a couple of things over the years, I hope he has had a good career but it must be tough to peak with a performance like this in a movie where you will always be overshadowed by your co-star.

I taught at Cal State Northridge for three years from 1982 to 1985, so most of the people and places were very recognizable to me. During those years I was really into music, I listened to KROQ and went after my classes on Fridays to record stores to look for music I'd heard and enjoyed. There must be a dozen songs on the soundtrack of this movie that I bought the albums of the artists for before the movie existed. Sparks, Gary Myrick and the Figures, Modern English and the Plimsouls were all in my LP collection, and then the movie came and those artists were all featured. The Plimsouls especially since they are the band that plays in the nightclub that Randy hangs out in. The most overused song from a band in the early 80's is Modern English's "I Melt for You", it is a wonderful song that has become something of a cliche. The cliche starts here because this was the first movie to use the song a romantic theme in a film. The end of the film has a "Graduate" vibe with a somewhat uncertain but hopeful expression on the faces of the leads, and then that song starts playing and everything is going to be OK.

This movie was championed by Siskel and Ebert on their movie review show. Both of them spoke of how much better it was then many films aimed at adults and really miles ahead of some of the dreck that targeted kids. I would have to look back but I think both of them had it on their top ten films of the year for 1983. I had always thought of 1984 as the best year for movies of the 80's but two of my wife's favorite films are from 1983, Valley Girl and The Right Stuff. I am really glad to have the memory of seeing those movies in theaters with her, and we still love them enormously, before the DVD of Valley Girl was released, I had to buy a copy for her for a gift, an out of print Laserdisc cost me $70 on ebay, but it brought a whole lot of pleasure to our lives. If you want a great teen comedy from the 1980's, this is the gold standard..see it.

VOTD: 37 Movie Trailers Featuring Art Gilmore | /Film

VOTD: 37 Movie Trailers Featuring Art Gilmore | /Film

Don LaFontaine of the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Rest in Peace Mr. Gilmore

Coming-attraction attractions: 24 movie trailers that function as standalone works of art | Film | Inventory | The A.V. Club

Coming-attraction attractions: 24 movie trailers that function as standalone works of art | Film | Inventory | The A.V. Club

Just a nice link to an article on trailers. Enjoy.

PARTICIPATE IN CHOOSING THE NEXT MOVIE A DAY BLOG PROJECT!!!

I have had almost a week and a half off since I finished the Summer Movie Project and I am starting to get antsy. I did enjoy writing about the movies and experiences that made up that time in my life. I have decided to start my next blog project in the first week in October. I would like your help in choosing exactly where to focus. I have pulled nearly a hundred films from the 1980s out from their place on my DVD shelves. I thought that we could share a genre for the month. I will try to write about two films a week in that period. The question for you is, what kinds of films would you like to have me work on? I have classified them into several categories in the poll on the right. I would like you to vote for a category you would most like to see. If I can get twenty or more people to participate in the poll, I promise I will use that category to draw the films from.

Novelty title sequences

Novelty title sequences

I found this nifty article linked on IMDB, I don't want to lose it and I think anyone interested in movies will enjoy it. So click away and learn a little.

Time After Time 1979 A Movie A Day Day 97

Nearly a hundred days ago, I started this project in a pique. Since my summer classes did not start for three weeks after the Spring semester was over, I had time on my hands and I did not want to fritter it away without having accomplished something. The idea of a blog, based on watching a movie every day seemed very appealing. I can watch five movies a day if the time is available, it is usually my pleasure. I wanted a theme to work around the movies so I chose films that I saw when I was growing up. I was twelve when the seventies started and twenty-one when they finished. Since it was Summer, I thought it fitting to write about Summer films of that time. There have been an amazing variety of movies covered in the last 97 days. I found however, that when movie watching becomes an obligation, it is not always a pleasure. There were several times during the Summer when I was stressed out about getting my movie in. I missed one day when we were in Vegas, and Amanda took over for the week that I was in Alaska. Squeezing in a film, between dinner and going out, or taking one with me on my ipod when we were on the road, are examples of the kinds of effort I made to keep up. If you check the time on the posts, you will find a number that just managed to get in before the stroke of twelve. I have every intention of continuing to write about movies and probably my life, but I am not going to keep it on a calendar like I did for the past three months. I look forward to going to school tomorrow, teaching my classes, coming home and then doing as I choose rather than forcing myself to watch one of the movies from the list. Don't misunderstand, I have enjoyed watching most of the movies, even if I did not enjoy the movie. It is my pleasure now to introduce you to the final post on this project.

"Time After Time" is 100% a pure pleasure. If you have not seen this movie, you are in for a treat when you do. There are so many terrific elements here that starting is a dilemma. Probably it is best to start with the set up. It is 1893 London and a group of Victorian era gentlemen are dining. We have seen the murder of a prostitute just a few moments before, but that can surely have nothing to do with this distinguished group of men. The host is Mr. H.G. Wells, writer and it turns out inventor. He is there to revel to his friends his newest invention, a time machine, and to announce his plan to travel to the future utopia he expects in three generations. When Scotland Yard shows up at his door, in pursuit of Jack the Ripper, it is only when He discovers his Time Machine is missing that he figures out that one of his friends, is indeed the Ripper and has escaped to the future. When the machine automatically returns to it's place in his basement, he decides to pursue the criminal to save the civilized world he imagines will be overwhelmed by a sick murderer in it's midst. I can't visualize a better set up of a story, H.G. Wells pursuing Jack the Ripper across time. The concept alone is priceless but it is developed by a very good storyteller named Nicholas Myer. He wrote a Sherlock Holmes novel that was then made into a movie he directed. "The Seven-Percent Solution" uses a similar mixture of characters, like Holmes and Sigmund Freud, to tell an adventure story. "Time After Time" is a thriller with a science fiction element. By itself that would be satisfying, but Myer adds in the perfect ingredient to make the picture an essential in my opinion. He adds a love story. A story that crosses a century of attitudes and the usual thriller elements to make us truly care about the outcome.

Over the years thousands of writers and millions of film fans have written about and witnessed what is called "screen chemistry". Errol Flynn and Olivia deHavalind had that chemistry and it helped them make eight films together that really worked. Most of you can think of actors that have meshed together so well on screen that it is hard to separate them. Romantic chemistry like Tracy and Hepburn or comradely like Redford and Newman. I would be hard pressed to think of another screen pairing where the chemistry came together so quickly and completely, right in front of us, as the matching of Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen. From their first scene together, you can feel them falling for each other. I had never imagined McDowell as a romantic lead before this movie, afterwords I wondered why he was not cast that way all the time. This was only her second movie, and she was a complete charmer in both of the films. I admit that I had a big crush on her, she was pretty without being glamorous and sweetness just falls off of her like frosting off the sides of a cake. There have been other star romances based on working together in a picture, this one surprised me not one bit. They were married for ten years, I'm sure she loves Ted Danson her current husband, but in my mind she and McDowell will always be a couple. The screenplay lets an unconventional pairing pull us into the events. It is a fish out of water story in both directions.

As antagonists go, is there anything more provocative and potentially frightening than Jack the Ripper? In this story he is established as a surgeon, a chess player who regularly outwits the brilliant H.G.Wells, and a vile disturbed killer. David Warner is an actor that I have enjoyed in dozens of movies. He has never quite had leading man status, and he reminds me of an English version of Donald Sutherland. He is versatile and proficient. As Dr. Stevens, aka the Ripper, he creates a sense of malice immediately. There are some good chase scenes in the movie but the exchanges between him and the other two character are the best parts of the story. In one scene, Wells has tracked him down in his hotel room, and he shows Wells the TV news. He knows exactly how to wound his former friend, despoiling his vision of a Utopian future of peace and equality. It is a fine performance, and it is aided by some clever script points which make the movie look at more than just the action/thriller components.

The detective story is also well told. Wells pursuit of the Ripper is very smart and utilizes the fact that both of them are not of the times. The film is set in 1979 so there are the usual changes in the world for us to notice. The price of gas is 67 cents a galleon, the menu at McDonald's has most of the items under a dollar. One of the banks in the city of San Francisco that Wells tries to track Stevens down through is the National Bank of Iran. Of course with a time machine, he is able to discover the scene of a future crime, but in trying to get the S.F.P.D. to follow up, he makes an error that all of us in the audience will see but he does not realize will undermine his credibility. The story is set up to work logically as a puzzle in a very complete form. All time travel stories have conundrums that might undermine them. This one is no different, but once you are following the story, the paradoxes will not make any difference to how you feel. There is a twist that I remembered I did not see coming the first time I saw the movie. It created some very harsh emotional elements for a short time, and when it is resolved, I was rejoicing, even though I had been manipulated, because I cared so much about our two lovers.

The only flaw in the film is that the time travel sequences are not really interesting. In "The Time Machine", the 1960 George Pal telling of the story, the movement through time was indicated in a clever visual manner. Here the time travel element is a series of photographic effects that work at showing how the trip might be but are not all that strong in the creativity department. Don't let that put you off of the movie, after all its two minutes of the two hours. This is not a special effects movie, it is a film about special people and ideas. It is gratifying to finish this series with a movie I adore and a chance to encourage anyone who reads this to revisit it or if you are lucky, see it for the first time.

Watch This space for future blog projects, but don't expect a daily update, I would need a Time Machine of my own to make that work with my regular class schedule.

The Omega Man 1971 A Movie A Day Day 96

As I was struggling to find copies of movies for the blog, I looked back over my original list and saw "The Omega Man" listed there in 1971. I guess my timing is a little off, this is a movie that I bought on Blu-Ray and watched just a few months ago. I suppose having seen it so recently, I tricked myself into believing that I had already used it for the blog. A little review shows that this is not the case and so I get to finish up this project with a film from one of the early years in my time requirement, and tomorrow's entry is from the last year I was reviewing for the project. A span of nine years covered in two days.

I'm excited about today's movie for a pretty specific reason, this is one of the earliest movies that I went to see by myself. I'm not talking about seeing it without my parents, I mean I went and no one that I knew went with me. Some of you may think this is an odd habit and some may find it normal. I am usually a pretty social person. I don't like being alone much, and I enjoy doing things with my family, both then and now. Once I figured out that I liked going to the show, even by myself, I was in trouble, because it is rare for me to skip a film I'm interested in, simply because no one else is. In the Summer of 1971, my family spent most of the season at Lake Gregory, near Arrowhead California. My father had put together with some investors, an elaborate staging of his Illusion show, and we were presenting it in a big circus sized tent. We started doing the show nightly except on Mondays, but the crowds that were supposed to be at this location did not appear. After a couple of weeks, we dropped down to Thursday through Sunday shows. The only nights that we were sold out were the three nights around the Fourth of July weekend. My Dad got very sick that summer, the investors lot a ton of money, and I was left to my own devices on the days we were home from the lake. It was one of those nights that I strolled up Garfield Ave, and cruised into the El Rey theater. Here, Charlton Heston and I became close friends.

I hear the Yenny's talk about scenarios for dealing with a Zombie Uprising, and my future son-in-law runs a group of hacker's that are Zombie Hunters on weekends. My first visualization of the end of the world and a zombie apocalypse, comes from "The Omega Man". Before the movie came out, the book that the movie was based on was promoted with a paperback release, featuring an image of Charlton Heston, staring down the reader through a high powered rifle with an infra-red scope. That looked cool to me and I bought the book and read it(In fact it may still be in a box in the garage). It turns out that the hero is not pestered with zombies, but rather vampires created by a biological disaster. When I get to the movie, they are not vampires and they really are not zombies. We have survivors of biological warfare, who have created a cult of Luddites, determined to turn their back on technology and the past. Heston's character is the lone survivor of the plague that is unaffected by any symptoms. He was researching a cure when involved in a helicopter crash and was only able to test the serum on himself before the world collapsed.

Anyone recognizing this as the plot from the Will Smith movie "I Am Legend" should know that that movie, this movie and the Vincent Price film, "The Last Man on earth" are all based on the Richard Matheson novel. He wrote some great Twilight Zone episodes and a book and screenplay for another film on this list, The Legend of Hell House. Spielberg should send him money every year because he also wrote Duel, the TV movie that turned Spielberg into a star. None of the three movies is exactly true to the novel, but I like this one the best. The opening section of the film, with Neville, tooling around L.A. in a red convertible, with no one else around is very creepy. The Will Smith version, focuses on this for the first hour or so, and it is the best part of the movie. Once we get some plot and other characters, the movie falls apart. "The Omega Man" does not suffer from that, it is a lot tighter, the lonely guy sequences are just enough to create fear and empathy, and then the others come in. The plague ravaged survivors are blind in the light, and zombiefied in their appearance, but they do speak and have their own twisted reasoning. The morality play is a lot more effective in this version than in the others because the plague infested have an agenda and can articulate it. We may see them as wrong, but they can be understood. Anthony Zerbe, another one of those great character actors who everyone recognizes but not everyone knows, plays the leader of this death cult. He has had bigger parts in movies over the years, but I always remembered him for this role which freaked me when I was 13.

Anyway, my vision of how to deal with the end of the world starts with this movie. Drive a cool car, build an impenetrable fortress, stock it with food and luxury. Don't forget when you are out to stop at the theater where you have a generator set up so you can run a movie for yourself every once in a while, even if it is the same movie for the rest of eternity, and even if it is Woodstock. The only drawback in my plan is that I'm not as smart as Heston's character, and I'm not as badass either. Maybe that's why I wanted to be Charlton Heston when I grew up. Along with "Planet of the Apes" and "Soylent Green" he made the best trio of thought provoking science fiction films in my life.